Impact of innovative technologies on fruit and vegetable quality

Abstract

Food processing operations have a major impact on the stability of the nutrients and generally damage antioxidants in fruit and vegetables, and their products. Domestic, conventional, industrial and even non-thermal processing is reported to degrade the level of phytochemicals in processed food products. Recent concerns in non-thermal technologies are not only to obtain high quality food with "fresh-like" properties, but also to provide food with better functionalities. However, some researchers reported that results obtained from non-thermal processes might not be different from the thermal treatments. The main focus of this review is to clarify the dependence of non-thermal technologies such as high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), pulsed electric field (PEF) and ultrasound (US) processing on key nutrients of fruits and vegetables.